This one was fun. Here are some photos from my trip to Amish cheese maker Goot Essa last year. Together with my friend Ben Riehl, we made the 2.5-hour drive up from Lancaster County last December. I’ve been saving these photos for a post. To get there, we traveled through several central PA valleys which have Amish populations. This is a shot taken on the…
Trend Alert: People are buying Amish sheds and converting them into living spaces, studios, and stores. That’s the report from the Bangor Daily News. They share the story of Jason and Jennifer Remillard, a Chicago couple who moved to Maine several years ago to “homestead”. This fits in nicely with the tiny home movement that’s been mainstream for about a decade now. Here’s the couple…
That’s the clear message from Steven Nolt of Elizabethtown College. He has analyzed the numbers and shares why with us today. This comes in contrast to one recent headline (“It’s too early to know whether Amish voters ‘delivered’ Pennsylvania for Trump, researchers say“). Rather, Nolt says that “It IS too early to know how many Amish voted, but it’s not too early to know that…
How do the Amish create new churches? Jim Halverson sends along a snippet from Amish publication Die Blatt giving an Amish church “District Division” report from Indiana. Note: this would be “divide” in the neutral/positive sense (not a split where different factions of Amish go their different ways). We’ll take a look at that report below. First a bit about the Amish church district. A…
A sad story out of northwest PA. An 11-year-old Amish boy was lethally shot on Saturday while hunting for chipmunks. From the Erie Times-News: MEADVILLE — Three young members of a Crawford County Amish community were hunting chipmunks over the weekend when a shot fired from a .22-caliber rifle struck an 11-year-old boy in the head, causing his death, according to the Pennsylvania State Police….
The one-year-old baby was thrown from the buggy along with her mother. The baby survived with minor injuries…while her mother lost her life. From the New York State Police: On October 28, 2024, at about 4:15 p.m., State Police in Herkimer responded to Butler Road in the town of Newport for a crash involving a motor vehicle and an Amish Buggy. A preliminary investigation revealed…
Jim Halverson gives us a look inside a plain and simple Amish country store in Gladwin County, Michigan. Gladwin County is home to a pair of Amish communities. Last autumn, we had a nice look at a Swartzentruber Amish barn-raising from this area. And we’ve also seen inside a Gladwin County Amish home, from a group similar to the conservative Kenton, Ohio Amish. An Amish…
With the election nearly upon us, we have gotten our fair share of the expected “Will the Amish vote?” articles. I’ve been seeing this coverage for months now. I have contributed to some of it as well (for some reason, mostly for French-language publications). Among the latest is this piece from Deseret News, which suggests two things of interest that could motivate more Amish to vote…
It’s wild mushroom season and one Amish family learned the hard way that eating the wrong mushroom can have consequences. This happened last week in Peach Bottom Township in York County, PA. From CBS 21 News: YORK COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) — Eleven people, including children, were hospitalized Friday night after eating wild mushrooms in Peach Bottom Township, according to Delta-Cardiff Volunteer Fire Company. Emergency dispatchers received…
A reader in central Minnesota shares some photos of an Amish community phone. In many Amish settlements, families share a common phone. So that aspect is not uncommon. But there’s one thing about this phone setup that I’ve never seen before. But before we take a look, it’s worth mentioning that Amish use the telephone in many different ways. Here are three options (though these…